


I, Umbridge

by tambrathegreat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 12:23:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6329014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tambrathegreat/pseuds/tambrathegreat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dolores Umbridge gets what she deserves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I, Umbridge

When you die, time flows backwards in your consciousness like diamond-clear water in a bed of the darkest jet. 

I watch from above as a wraith fills the vision of my body below, my experience a dichotomy of what I see with my physical eyes and what I see with my spectral ones. I watch the scene with some detachment from above whilst my bloated human forms jiggles and writhes against the figure in a mocking parody of the act of love.

But you never knew that emotion, eh, Dolores?

I turn and they are all there, those people from my past that are lost to their loved-ones because of me. They stare at me, accusing, hollow-eyed, gaunt. There was a bit of Muggle history my grandmum told me about, long ago on that plane, a second ago here. I see the same gaunt and haunted faces on the victims of that Messianic purity-preaching Austrian as I see on my own victims. 

They gather about me, forming a well of souls above which I cannot rise. I am to be killed here in the afterlife as well, it seems. I am to be pushed back to the earth to rise as a cockroach, a gnat, a Muggleborn, or not at all.

I am Dolores Jane Umbridge, and this is my story.

I next become aware of my greatest loss, the loss of my freedom. I see myself shaking before the Wizengamot, begging on my knees for mercy. In their eyes, I see the echoes of my victims. I observe the trial as from a great distance, yet know I am in the scene as well.

My body cries out as, in the extremity of my fear, a rush of urine floods the dais. It coats my legs, soaking my once-lovely pink frock as I plead, “I was only following orders! It was me or them... YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT WAS LIKE!”

“I do!” shouts a masculine voice. “I still resisted them, you ruddy bint!”

Another male voice shouts over the others, “’Ave ‘er kissed! Let ‘er live as me wife does now!”

A woman’s voice rings out over all the others. It is a familiar voice that screams, “It should have been you, then, you great ugly toad! I lost my family, my daughters and my husband, because of you!”

I see my body whip around to see the witch’s face, my accuser, my victim. From my vantage as an observer, I see on my physical form the same contemptuousness I have exhibited for a lifetime. Half bloods and hybrid creatures have no place in wizarding society. I believe this as a religious convert believes his fairy tales of gods caring about them. It is the one tenet to which I cling, the one mantra I say even now. “They told us your families had stolen from us! That we were made less by them possessing magic! I just did as they told me to do! You don’t know...”

A bit of refuse, rotten and slimy strikes my head and then a barrage of offal follows. There are other, equally painful shouts in the gallery, and I turn from them, covering my head. They do not understand the pressure under which I functioned. They do not understand the sacrifices I made. They do not understand my quest for the world to recognise my greatness in rising above the low circumstances to which I was born.

They don’t know my own ignominious beginnings.

And the apart me realises that there is no greatness in hubris. There is no destiny in narcissism. There is only a woman wrapped in an unattractive package, with a disagreeable disposition. My apart consciousness realises that I have only lived for me. Self-absorption does not lend itself to self-discovery and until I see this memory, I have never felt the foreign emotion which jolts with electric suddenness through my body. I hide my eyes, cringing with the new pain. 

For the first time in my existence, I feel shame.

There is a stretch of blackness in the river of images, and then I am with the one man to whom I would have devoted my life if he hadn’t been married already. He labours over me late at night in my office after everyone is gone. Yaxley, though not the most dashing of figures, has been allowed to breach forty-eight years of virginity. I would say I love him, but the emotion seems foreign to me. He is more a reflection of what I would be if I were male.

He finishes, leaving me sticky and sore. He grunts once as he notices just what I have given him. He grumbles, “A ruddy virgin.”

I flush with wounded pride, still wondering if that was all there was to the act of love. It seems lacking somehow. He busies himself with buttoning his trousers, looking at that secret spot between my legs. I move to block his view, but he slaps my face lightly. “I didn’t give you leave to close your legs, Whore.”

I keep them open, his emissions cooling on my skin, dripping onto the desk below me. Finally he says, “We’ll do it again, but don’t expect me to leave my wife.”

He married into money, and I do understand the need to keep it. It is one subject of many on which we agree. He finally orders, “Clean up, you daft bint. I’ll be around next week for more. Don’t prod me before that.”

I do so, knowing that I am the one with the real power in this unequal relationship. I hold the evidence of his ruin in a marvellous Muggle device that I purchased for just such an occasion, one of the few things their world has to offer of worth. When he leaves, I open the cabinet in which the charmed video camera sits and I watch the scene of my defloration again. I am warmed by the knowledge that I am protected by the images of his weakness. If, as Cornelius claims, You-Know-Who has returned, I will retain my position in the New Order.

The memory fades once more and I am in my office surrounded by the trappings of niceness. The pink of the walls, the Cluny lace curtains, and the kittens on the plates all show that my public persona of strict propriety is misunderstood. The boy looks at me, incredulousness, hurt, and anger warring for supremacy on his features, as I bid him to continue with the exercise I have set before him. 

The Boy-Who-Lived! 

Bah! More like the saviour that was manufactured by Albus Dumbledore. I will show the boy how wrong he is to place his faith in such an unworthy mentor. I will save him from himself and the people who would manipulate him into fighting their battles. I will, with my gracious discipline, let him know that Dolores Umbridge will not take any of his delusional nonsense.

I will be the proper wizarding mother he should have had. I will be the woman who teaches him what life is really all about. I will take him...

The boy begins writing again, and the blood from the scratching of the quill falls onto the paper. I am transfixed by that blood. It transports me to a place that I have only visited in the solitude of my rooms, in the pages of the best of the Marquis' students. It sends a sexual thrill through me, to see that I am the one author of change on that pale, innocent skin. I am behind my desk and I squeeze my thighs together to keep the feeling inside me. I won’t let it out until he is gone and I am alone in my pink office with the little cats who watch me knowingly from their porcelain prisons.

Were I an immoral woman, I would say these feelings that flood my organs were simple lust. There has never been a moment that blood wasn’t part of my mental playground, that the infliction of pain wasn’t linked to the sex act, at least in my mind. My virgin body has yet to experience that aspect of life. Yet, when I see the boy and his blood, a warmth that must be love floods my being. He looks up as I cry out in triumph, face flushed, breasts heaving. I say, “Get on with it, Mr. Potter. I will let you know when you have completed the deed to my satisfaction...”

And the frenzied feeling starts again in my lower body as he picks up the quill, hissing with the renewed stroke on the paper...

I am fifteen and in love with Lucius Malfoy who is in my year. Rita Skeeter and I take turns drawing his name on the inside covers of our books. He is heavenly in his pure-blooded arrogance and his hauteur. He passes me on the way to the front of the room to turn in an assignment. I simper and smile, knowing that if he will just notice me once, he will be mine. 

He looks down his nose as he passes and gives me that tight little smirk that I so long to kiss. I hear a hiss from behind; it is the Black girl, Narcissa. “Oh my, I smell something off, Selwyn. Something is just not as pure as it claims to be.”

I turn my burning face toward the table. I am mortified. I never should have told her about my mother and her weakness when we were still friends in first year. I never should have admitted that I don’t know who my father is. He could be any Muggle or wizard that Mum slept with to keep her in her supply of drugs and alcohol. 

I hate her!

I say this, not knowing of whom I really speak. Is it Narcissa? Or my mother, the whore?

Rita sniggers, passing me a note on acid green paper. Her penmanship is loopy and hard to read, but I decipher the note. It says, “At least your cousin isn’t a shirt-lifting, blood-traitor and your sister hasn’t done the entire Quidditch team from each house! I hear she even took on that great oaf, Hagrid, and she had room to take on both Lestranges at the same time. What a slut!”

I laugh out loud at this and pass the note to Narcissa, feeling better for my revenge. Rita is the best friend a girl could have if you are poor, a bastard, possibly half-blood, and in Slytherin. Choke on that, Narcissa Black from the perverted house of Black, I think as Lucius returns. His brow is lifted and I hear Narcissa snuffle. He will see how weak she is, how not suited she is to his lifestyle. 

I bat my lashes at him, and he passes on, his cool facade unruffled, and I feel a flutter in my chest for him. I will never love another man.

And then, I open my eyes for the first time, born to the world that was once my mother’s oyster. She has me on her stomach as the midwife ties and cuts the cord. Once done, mother asks for her kit. She fills the needle, draws up blood, and as the midwife takes me away, my well-used mother nods off in the land of dragons. I cry, my first wails of protest. This isn’t the life I deserved!

The midwife jiggles me and makes the shushing noise that was the only sound I heard in the dark before...

And then I am there hearing her heart, feeling her blood, twitching in utero to her cravings. I will learn this time, I will.

The souls part around me, ushering me to my new home. No afterlife for me. I am to be born to a prostitute in a time of darkness. They tell me that I need to learn my lesson this go round for there will be no other chances. Once I finish this life, my soul will die, unless I learn compassion, empathy, and sacrifice.

I need to learn what it is to love.

When you die, time flows backwards in your consciousness like diamond-clear water in a bed of the darkest jet.

I am Lizzie Borden...

I am Elisabeth Bathory...

I am Lucrezia Borgia...

I am Drusilla, sister-wife to the god, Caligula...

And this is my story...


End file.
